'Star Wars 8' May Involve Force Trees

Another day means another chance to speculate about the plot of the next Star Wars movie. According to ComicBookMovie.com, an excerpt from the script of Star Wars: Episode VIII has made its way online, and it comes from a source who has previously leaked legitimate set photos. Whether or not the excerpt is for real has yet to be confirmed, but it certainly provides great material for building new theories upon. Most interesting, perhaps, is the fact that the latest alleged "leak" seems to correspond with a previous theory that was making its way around the internet recently, involving force trees. So what are force trees from Star Wars, and what do they have to do with Star Wars: Episode VIII?

The comic book series Star Wars: Shattered Empire featured two force trees, or force-sensitive trees, prominently, and both were in the possession of Luke Skywalker. Luke revealed that the trees were incredibly important because they were all that remained of the tree that once stood in the center of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. He gifted one of the trees to Shara Bey, a pilot who also happened to be Poe Dameron's mom, who planted the tree in her garden, and Poe presumably grew up around it, while it's assumed that Luke kept the other.

According to ComicBookMovie.com, the leaked scene features a conversation between Luke Skywalker, Rey, and Yoda, and a mysterious vision in which two children are "playing near a tree on an alien planet." Being near it is "transformative" for both of them. If this is a legitimate scene from Star Wars: Episode VIII, then it certainly looks as though force trees are going to be an integral part of the Jedi universe going forward. When coupled with the previously highlighted evidence of comic book series Star Wars: Shattered Empire , it seems increasingly likely that one or more of the characters introduced in The Force Awakens have been affected by force trees, for good and possibly for bad.

Even though we've been told that Kylo Ren is the son of Leia and Han Solo, the story that's detailed in the vision from the allegedly leaked script sounds a lot like the competition between Rey and Ren. That the tree in the vision has made one child good, and the other bad, mirrors Ren and Rey's journey exactly, and could suggest that they are connected in an important way.

While we'll have to wait to find out for sure if the scene will actually feature in Star Wars: Episode VIII, it certainly looks like the Star Wars universe is expanding, and Rey's role in it is going to be incredibly important.

Images: Disney; Lucasfilm; Giphy